F.F. ou le Critique
Jean PaulhanFélix Fénéon“There is a man who preferred, in 1883, Rimbaud to all the poets of his time; defended from 1884 Verlaine and Huysmans, Charles Cros and Moréas, Marcel Schwob and Jarry, Laforgue, and above all Mallarmé. Discovered Seurat a little later, Gauguin, Cezanne and Van Gogh. Calls to La Revue blanche, which he directed from 1895 to 1903 – yes, from 1895 to 1903 –, André Gide and Marcel Proust, Apollinaire and Claudel, Jules Renard and Péguy, Bonnard, Vuillard, Debussy, Roussel, Matisse. As in The Mermaid, in 1919, Crommelynck, Joyce, Synge and Max Jacob. The man happy! It is at the meeting of two centuries. He knows how to retain, from the old, Nerval and Lautréamont, Charles Cros and Rimbaud. He introduces to the new Gide, Proust, Claudel, Valéry, who appear. We have perhaps not had in a hundred years only one critic, and it is Félix Fénéon. It creates a strange glory, outside the surveys and anthologies, outside academies and newspapers, outside life, as they say, literary. This creates a mysterious glory that should be held more closely, which should be understood.”
This is a new edition of F. F. or the Critique, with notes on the variants of a text by Jean Paulhan, published in 1943 by Confluences, in 1945 and 1948 by Gallimard, in 1969 by Claude Tchou, for Le Cercle du Livre Precious. A file of facsimiles follows, showing pages from one of F.'s manuscripts. F. or the Critique and fragments not retained by Jean Paulhan, as well as a file of critical reception, including texts by Maurice Blanchot (“The Mystère de la critique”), Alexandre Astruc (“F. F. or Vocation"), André Berne-Joffroy ("F. F.”), André Billy (“Fénéon, Paulhan ou la Critique”), Raymond Guérin (“Jean Paulhan or A New Incarnation of Letters”), Maurice Nadeau (“The Works of Félix Fénéon”) & André Wurmser (“Félix Fénéon, Homme yesterday").
Text established and introduced by Claire Paulhan.
Facsimile file. Critical file. Reproduction of two portraits of
Félix Fénéon.
New edition, based on the original manuscript, in March 1998. Mintage of 1,500
copies on ivory Centaure 90 g., under water green filled cover.
13 x 21.5 cm. 170 pages. ISBN: 2-912222-04-4.
Public sale price: €19
Editeur : Claire Paulhan